Kristy Bowen

We may receive a commission on purchases made from links.
Older or vintage-inspired bathrooms have a lot of charm and character that newer build spaces often lack, including elements like freestanding tubs, beautiful tiles, and antique vanities. You also may find that shower plumbing is more likely to be exposed, with piping that runs up the wall from the faucet and branches into an upper shower head and any removable attachments. While most modern bathrooms conceal much of this piping behind...

Your bathroom counters are an often-overlooked space, prone to cluttering and a build-up of daily essentials that aren't often the most glamorous looking. This includes toothbrushes and related dental care items that often get shuttled into medicine cabinets, drawers, or less than inspiring holders often bought in decorative sets from home stores. The thrift stores, however, are a great place to look for more visually striking ways to store your toothbrushes. One you might not have considered...

Sometimes what you put on the walls of your home can work against the desired aesthetic you wish to create. High-end interiors the likes of which you find on Pinterest and Instagram often have an elevated look, even if the decor itself is thrifted or budget-friendly. That luxurious look can often be attained not by what you put in a room, but more so by what you don't. There are certain wall design pitfalls you can avoid to create a more expensive-looking space.
By carefully avoiding certain ...

Older homes often have architectural flourishes and character that make them far more beautiful and interesting than their more modern counterparts. This includes quoins, those L-shaped pieces that often stand out at the corners of older brick or stone buildings. Not only are these pieces probably more plentiful than you've noticed, but they have a long history of serving both structural and cosmetic needs on homes and other buildings. On newer structures, these architectural bits may seem a ...

Plants can be a beautiful way to add texture and interest to your interior decor and create a natural feeling in a room — whatever your aesthetic. Home retailers and garden centers offer endless possibilities for housing your favorite leafy or flowering houseplants. However, you may be overlooking some objects you already own that would make the perfect pot. They include everything from common household items you can turn into beautiful planters, like glass bottles, teacups, and cooking pots....

If you love filling your home with unique and beautiful objects from decades past, you are likely well-acquainted with the many venues where you can find these things, be it thrift stores, antique stalls, flea markets, or online marketplaces and auctions. Architectural salvage shops or yards, however, are an often-overlooked alternative to thrift stores to find vintage things, though they usually focus more on building and interior elements than décor itself. You can typically find rare piece...

We may receive a commission on purchases made from links.
Style guru Martha Stewart knows how to create a beautiful home with impeccable base elements, furniture, and decorative accents. This includes her choice of wall decor, which can often prove a challenge, especially if you have a lot of walls to fill. While you can always go for the expected artwork or a mirror, Stewart shows off another fun alternative. When decorating a room in her home with multiple large windows and ample wall space...

Choosing the perfect material for your flooring can be a calculation of aesthetics, durability, and the ever-evolving wheel of flooring trends. While modern day homes are often filled with natural stone tiles or beautiful hardwood, another possibility may be coming back into style. Terracotta tiles, which were very popular around the turn of the millennium, are again growing in popularity with designers and homeowners. Terracotta fits with a variety of aesthetics, where it offers warmth, a ha...

Extra toilet paper rolls and paper towels can be some of the most unglamorous things to display out in the open. This means that usually these items are tucked away in cabinets and drawers, where you face the danger of cluttering your cupboards and still finding they aren't in reach when you need them. There are actually a lot of clever DIY ways to hide extra paper products attractively in plain sight, many of which are inexpensive and friendly. Some of them may employ things you already have...

Retro trends cycle in and out, especially when it comes to spaces like the kitchen, where utility and convenience are often at war with style and aesthetics. Tile counters, which once had their heyday in the 1970s and 1980s, may be just one of the many options when it comes to tiling your counters, but HGTV's Property Brothers Drew and Jonathan Scott have often gone on record to suggest they are never a good idea – even if some designers are loving their fun vintage look. Issues with cleaning...

Choosing the right countertop color for your kitchen can be one of the most important decisions you make in the space. Not only will counters stay with you for years (possibly decades), but they will greatly inform your kitchen design, possibly enduring many decor scheme changes and waxing and waning trends over time. While one great way to bring in a dramatic and bold look has been choosing colorful countertops, these pigment-saturated materials may be on their way out in favor of more earth...

While kitchen design trends change and evolve over the decades, some ideas have much longer tenure or come back into vogue over time, providing inspiration and guidance even a century later. Kitchens of the 1930s, which marked a departure from turn-of-the century cooking spaces, may once again be influencing modern kitchen design today in new ways. The sleekness and glamour of this particular era compliments modern-designed and contemporary spaces, where some of the tricks and tips still hold...

Lighting options in many rental units can be less than inspiring, particularly overhead and ceiling lights, which vary from decades-old yellowed fixtures to dreaded builder-grade flush-mount dome lights (jokingly called "boob lights") that plague many apartments. Since changing out rental fixtures can be tough and may result in losing your security deposit, renters are often stuck with ugly and ill-fitting ceiling lights until they move. An ingenious TikTok hack, however, may save you months,...

Thrifting can often produce beautiful treasures that might be rarer and more expensive finds than you imagine. Hand-blown glass, particularly the colorful shades and intricate patterns of Murano glass from Venice, can occasionally turn up on thrift store shelves at a steal compared to its high price on the collector's market. With a centuries-long history of glass manufacturing in Italy, these pieces can be found in all sorts of variations, from art glass sculptures and vessels to light fixtu...

While the design world has been filled with neutral-driven minimalistic spaces for the past couple of decades, maximalism is slowly creeping in as an alternative to spare and sparsely decorated homes. Favoring a "more is more" philosophy, maximalist spaces revel in pattern, color, and other eclectic elements to exert their charm. However, a specific kind of maximalism is on the rise that is particularly rooted in history, storytelling, and personality. Called "heritage maximalism" by some, th...